One of the most common questions that I get from my friends is “With diabetes, you have to exercise a lot, right?”.  Short answer: It helps, long answer: Not too much!

Playing!

Whenever I play football I usually play QB or WR. My neighbors are great catchers and together we really make a great team.  I gained quite a few yards for my team and scored a few touchdowns!  This weather is so nice, that I did not have to wear 2,000 layers (thankfully).  But I did drop a few yards this game due to interceptions, similar to what sometimes happens with my blood sugar.

Dropping!

Luckily this game, nothing regarding my blood sugar happened. But sadly, I am not always this lucky.  During intense exercise, my blood sugar can drop like a missed bomb pass.  When you exercise, your muscles use up more fuel. The fuel that powers us all is called glucose. As you may already know, glucose is stored as blood sugar.  When our muscles need more of it, they’ll just help themselves like your blood is an all-you-can-eat buffet.  This happens to everybody, whether you have T1D or not.  But normal people can raise their glucose levels naturally.  Without this ability, you would have lows just like me.  But when you have T1D, the part of your pancreas that also helps you make glucose is broken.  So without the ability to make my own glucose, and my muscles stealing it all, me and

other Type Ones often plummet when we exercise.

Scientific and health aspects aside, there’s also the social and game aspect of it.  It is highly annoying for both me and my teammates when I go low during a game.  Going low during a game and returning to play is a long and highly annoying process.  First, I have to realize that I’m going low (mostly during an important play. Thanks body!*.)  I then have to tell my friends that I have to go in for a bit.  I have to walk inside and test my blood sugar (which takes about 5 minutes on it’s own.)  I then have to eat something and wait 15 minutes to retest to see if my sugar even rose up.  Then I can go outside and play, assuming that I’m feeling better.  My symptoms often do not go away as soon as I eat and it takes 5-10 minutes for them to go away normally.  The whole process takes about 30 minutes.  At least it’ll be a lot easier with the Dexcom CGM so I can see what direction my sugar is heading and I can stop a low before it happens!

*EVEN MORE SARCASM (EXTREME AIR-GUITAR)